A high-haired Brad Pitt gets in touch with his inner Chad in 'Burn After Reading,' a satisfying bit of nonsense from the Coen brothers.

It's not hard to see why Joel and Ethan Coen might have needed a pick-me-up project after last year's weighty drama "No Country for Old Men."

For all of its brilliance and for all of its Oscars, on the cheerfulness scale, that film fell somewhere between accidental drowning and, well, intentional drowning. It was enough, one gets the feeling, to make even the most serious auteur crave something screwball.

Enter "Burn After Reading."

It hasn't got the deep, thought-provoking message of "No Country, " nor does it have the deliberately ambiguous ending that enraged so many viewers -- and that's what's so great about it. This is a just-for-funsies project, and the Coens seem to revel in it, helped along by an impressive cast that gleefully follows their lead.

George Clooney and Frances McDormand yuk it up in the Coen brothers' 'Burn After Reading.'

BURN AFTER READING

3 stars, out of 4

Plot: A pair of gym employees try to cash in after finding a CD containing the unpublished, tell-all memoirs of a CIA operative.

What works: This is pure, meaningless fun, a grown-up comedy enriched by Joel and Ethan Coen's storytelling mastery.

What doesn't: The laughs aren't as full and frequent as the trailer might suggest, and an argument can be made that the performances are over the top.

John Malkovich is a disgruntled spook whose in-progress memoirs end up on the locker-room floor of a D.C.-area fitness center.

Frances McDormand is a good-natured but determined gym worker who tries to parlay those memoirs into cash to cover a few strategic nips and tucks.

George Clooney is a serial philanderer who unwittingly finds himself in the middle of it all.

And Brad Pitt is -- well, he's an idiot.

It's a sprawling tale, but the Coens, armed with their storytelling mastery, manage to hold all the moving parts together tidily, and have some fun in the process.

To a person, the Coens' cast attack their larger-than-life roles full-bore. Sure, that means they at times risk going over the top, but for all of his ridiculously volcanic rage, Malkovich is hilarious as the cornered intelligence operative, as is McDormand as the thoroughly dopey, but dangerously desperate, blackmailer with a penchant for mixed metaphors. ("He's got his thing caught in a big, fat wringer -- and we're in the driver's seat.")

The bulk of the praise, however, is reserved for Pitt, who checks his leading-man ego at the door to play a hyperactive, gum-chomping dweeb named Chad. This is generally the kind of role an actor will take on his way up the Hollywood ladder, then abandon once entrenched as a bankable A-lister. By getting in touch with his inner Chad -- a character who lacks any trace of the actor's real-life suavity -- Pitt proves above all else that he doesn't take himself too seriously.

Neither do the Coens, clearly, as evidenced by a final scene that serves as a shrugged "whatever" from the filmmakers. (Even the title suggests they realize their film has a certain disposable quality about it.)

Even if they're not sure what they've wrought, "Burn After Reading" ends up being a solidly diverting grown-up comedy, enriched by the Coens' well-honed filmmaking trademarks, including a smattering of didn't-see-that-coming twists, a satisfying dose of nuance (What is Clooney up to in that basement of his, anyway?), and a couple of scenes that are more violent than you'd expect.

Not only is it a refreshing change from all the adolescent humor that has dominated the box office over the past few months, but it's also a refreshing escape from all the everything going on outside the multiplex.